READ THE 3RD PARAGRAPH FROM THE BOTTOM------------
Friday, September 07, 2007
POLITICS AND LAWS
Labour unions failing to meet workers’ needs
(04-09-2007)
HA NOI — Though most foreign direct investment enterprises have labour unions, they do not seem to be working on all cylinders to fight for workers’ rights.
Recent research on the effectiveness of labour unions in 60 different foreign direct investment enterprises (FDI) employing a total of 80,000 workers, shows that 80 per cent have labour unions, only half of which have a working agreement.
In fact, the agreements appear to be perfunctory at best, as working conditions and compensation differ only slightly from those under the labour law. More than 10 per cent of the workers questioned were not certain if their companies had a working agreement.
In addition, sums for expenses such as lunch or transportation were not mentioned in agreements. According to experts in the investigation delegation, enterprises make these payments to workers as grants or management tools, rather than carrying out their responsibilities to their employees.
According to a survey at FDI, among enterprises with labour unions, only 59.3 per cent of workers were members of the union, and 28.3 per cent of them wanted to join, 5.9 per cent did not care and 53.3 per cent did not respond when asked about participation in labour union activities. This illustrates the less than prominent place labour unions hold in the work place.
The main reason for labour unions’ weak showing within enterprises can be attributed to the fact that all of its members are also employed by the company.
They do not have time to focus on labour union activities and lack experience in negotiations that could lead to favourable conditions being added to the working agreement, said Truong Ngoc Hien, head of the Labour Union from Bac Ninh Province, 30km east of Ha Noi.
"None of the staff at district levels is qualified enough to deal with the problem. We now urgently need people with legal knowledge to use better negotiation tactics when dealing with smart employees," said Hien.
The province has been a rising destination of FDI investments and has recently played host to a number of disputes and strikes. While disputes are an important issue in FDI enterprises, the province has yet to form an authority for dispute settlement.
There have been more than 8,100 investment projects nation-wide which provide jobs for more than 1.4 million people. FDI enterprises employs 1.1 million of these workers. Among thousands of disputes and 1,600 strikes in the past 10 years, 70 per cent occurred in an FDI enterprise.
According to Ha Van Cuong, an official of Ha Noi Industrial Zones’s Labour Union, most enterprises in industrial zones are FDI. The activities of labour unions are funded predominantly by the contribution of workers and support from enterprises.
"It is very difficult to conduct labour union activities since we don’t have independent finance sources." said Cuong.
The survey reveals that although 95 per cent of unionised workers get higher wages than the minimum wage of VND800,000 (US$50) a month, only 70 per cent of unionised workers have had their wages revised in the past three years, while the inflation rate and Consumer Price Index have increase by a minimum of 7 per cent and 6 per cent respectively each year.
Experts all agree that workers belonging to labour unions in FDI enterprises should be more active.
Official of Hai Duong Province’s Labour Union, Vu Quang Binh, said: "It is important for labour unions at enterprises to hold periodical meetings between employers and employees to discuss conditions and solve disputes properly." — VNS
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
